Dom “soulcas” Sulcas is one of the top VALORANT products out of the U.K. and has been a vital part of Team Liquid for over two years. But he’s also typically on the wrong end of infamous knife highlights—and it happened again today in the first map of the Omega bracket at VCT LOCK//IN.
In the debut of the new Liquid roster, the team found themselves on the wrong side of a beatdown at the hands of Team Secret on Icebox. Going into their defensive half trailing 10-2, the pistol round had already gone horribly wrong, with soulcas trying to salvage something in a one-vs-four situation.
In attempting to retake the A site through A main, soulcas got a kill but left his back turned to a low-health, lurking Jessie “JessieVash” Cristy Cuyco, who sneaked up from behind and plunged his knife between soulcas’ shoulder blades with a right-click. While the move didn’t completely demoralize Liquid and soulcas, who couldn’t help himself from laughing after, the EMEA contenders were unable to fight their way back on Icebox, eventually falling 13-8.
As alluded to by the broadcast desk, this isn’t the first or even the second knife-related mishap to befall soulcas in VCT competition.
Back in July 2021, during European Challengers play in a match against Fnatic, a blinded soulcas was chased down by a knife-wielding Boaster. And while Liquid still won that map, they did end up losing the series.
But that incident isn’t even the most memorable moment. Months earlier at Masters Reykjavík, one of the highlights (or lowlights) of the tournament was soulcas’ backfired knife attempt on Version1’s vanity. Soulcas lurked all the way behind vanity in attacker spawn on Haven but didn’t pull the trigger, opting to get behind him and potentially go for a knife or gather more info. But vanity backed up, and upon discovering something blocking his progress, whipped around and eliminated soulcas with a headshot. To add insult to injury, following the round, vanity excitedly waved to soulcas on stage.
While getting knifed stings, losing the match after stings worse, and in both previous incidents, soulcas and Liquid went on to lose the series. At time of writing, Liquid have already lost map one of their series to Secret and are currently trailing heavily on their pick of Fracture.
